People LIke Her(22)

I asked if we had to invite all of them.

“We have been to all their kids’ birthdays,” Emmy reminded me.

Exactly, I thought to myself. Have we not suffered enough?

At Xanthe Clarke’s, we were all on a narrowboat repainted specially for the occasion in bright stripes and blobs, going up and down the canal from Islington to King’s Cross and back again. This took three hours, before which it had already taken an hour for the various combinations of mums and kids to have their pictures taken in front of the boat. By the time we set off, it was raining and there was only room for half of us in the covered section. I was in my shirtsleeves. At one point the rain was refilling my wineglass faster than I was drinking. At several points I was seriously considering swimming for it.

There is a story—sadly apocryphal—that when Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia, visited Crimea in 1787, her lover, Prince Potemkin, had a series of fake villages constructed—villages one wall thick, like stage sets, to be viewed from her passing barge, complete with well-fed waving actors in peasant garb—in order to fool her into thinking that the land was flourishing and her subjects happy.

I often think of these things, these events, as Potemkin parties: pure spectacle, confected entirely for online purposes. They are not about the party games or the food or the drink or about anyone having a good time. They are entirely about the filtered photo of bunting against a brick wall—that perfect snap of someone pretending to smile as they pretend to whack a pi?ata; the lettering on the cupcakes, the giant foil balloons, the arty video of the entertainer blowing bubbles. Not to mention the contractually requisite number of images of the venue and mentions of its name, the carefully agreed-upon number of tags and hashtags of each sponsoring brand—the caterer, the florist, the makeup artist, the drinks company, the entertainment. It’s all great exposure for them, of course.

What it isn’t, for anyone, is very much fun.

I shall never forget the look Suzy Wao gave me when I picked up a cronut at one of her parties before she’d had a chance to have the arrangement photographed.

When I mentioned this to Emmy, she informed me—with a faint, wry smile—that fun was something people used to have in their twenties.

What I actually meant was fun for the kids. Every time you see a picture of a child having what appears to be a good time at a party on Instagram, just bear in mind how many shots it probably took to get that one perfect picture. How many times they had to pretend to be laughing at something and not get it quite right. How many times they had to pretend to be jumping with glee through a hoop, or zooming with joy down a slide. How all the time they spent pretending to do kid stuff could have been spent doing actual kid stuff.

I ask Emmy where we are having this birthday party and she tells me. I groan, and get a warning look.

“Listen, if you want to organize something yourself . . . ,” she tells me.

“Maybe I will,” I say. Maybe I actually will. A real party, with our real friends, and Coco’s. The sort of thing a normal family might do. No specially commissioned murals, no officially sponsored goody bags, no professional photographers, none of that stuff. A birthday party like the ones I remember from my own childhood: a couple of bunches of balloons taped up around the place, a table with some snacks, a load of kids the same age hopped up on sugar screaming and shouting and having a whale of a time, a load of adults standing around drinking.

Coco is going to absolutely love it.

Emmy

I can spot an influencer at a hundred paces, and that’s definitely one outside the Lord Napier right now. Yellow ditsy-print dress with buttons down the front, box-fresh white Converse, a giant wicker bag with pom-poms, and a Panama hat. So much highlighter on her cheekbones she’s blinding me from across the road, eyebrows that could have been drawn on with a permanent marker, nude matte lipstick that wouldn’t budge in a hurricane, and a choppy, jaw-length peroxide bob.

The dead giveaway, though, is the boyfriend dutifully snapping away with his iPhone (which means she’s an amateur—serious players pay an actual photographer to use a real camera). This one is really going for it—twirling around, looking downward while she fiddles with a single strand of hair, holding his hand so it’s just in shot and making out as if she’s just about to open the pub door (she’s not—it’s nine thirty a.m.). To be fair, the Lord Napier is an unusually photogenic local. Outside, the walls are almost entirely covered with hanging baskets, bursting with yellow and white flowers and dripping with foliage.

If I’d remembered that my Irene-appointed assistant was starting today, I’d have been less surprised when, half an hour later, I opened the door to those eyebrows.

“Hi!” she says, holding out an arm jangling with charm bracelets. “I think you follow me, so you probably know who I am? Irene said you needed some help!”

“I’m sorry, remind me what your name is?” I say, rocking Bear back and forth in the sling to keep him asleep.

“I’m Winter! Wow, it’s really nice in here. It always looks messy on your feed. And you look so, I don’t know, chic? Navy is not your usual thing, is it? You’re more, like, smiley rainbow mum? Oh my GOD, are all those for you? I mean, the dream!” She points at the pile of gifted glossy bags I haven’t yet had a chance to go through, stuffed with clothes, beauty products, and what looks like a brand-new NutriBullet.